Training Interorganizational Risk Management of Emergency Service First Responders with Virtual Simulation

Abstract

Emergency service first responders are increasingly confronted with hazardous work environments due to extreme weather conditions, new technologies such as solar panels, or antagonistic events. Consequently, police officers, firefighters, and prehospital care paramedics need to manage risks and ensure their own safety when working collaboratively. Virtual simulation enables regular training across a wide variety of scenarios, where high-risk situations and the consequences of faulty decisions can be experienced without endangering trainees. An extensive literature review reveals a lack of studies explicitly addressing virtual training of interorganizational risk management for emergency service first responders. It is argued how this phenomenon can be better understood by mapping types of scenarios and types of risks, by exploring how these risks can be conveyed in virtual simulations, and by a stronger focus on long-term learning retention and learning transfer to the workplace when evaluating studies.